MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
The U.S. seized the government plane of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, saying the purchase of it violated U.S. sanctions. It is just the latest sign of the tensions between the U.S. and Venezuela.
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Yeah. Maduro insists he won the election in Venezuela in July. But international observers and much of the world - including the U.S. - reject his claim. They back the opposition candidate, Edmundo Gonzalez, who says he actually got the most votes. So Maduro is cracking down on dissent, and a Venezuelan judge issued an arrest warrant for Gonzalez, accusing him of sabotaging the election and conspiring against the government.
MARTIN: Freelance reporter Manuel Rueda has been following this story. He was in Venezuela for the recent presidential election, and he is with us now from Bogota, Colombia. Manuel, good morning.
MANUEL RUEDA: Hi. Good morning.
MARTIN: So it's not every day that a country basically repossesses another country's presidential jet. What did the Venezuelan government say about this?
RUEDA: So basically, the Venezuelan government is calling this an act of piracy. They issued a statement yesterday where they said they're going to take legal measures and try to get compensation for the plane, although it's not clear where they could head for this kind of compensation, where they could seek resource.
MARTIN: Well, especially since, as we've said, the U.S. says that this is a violation of sanctions. The purchase of it was undercover to - so - to begin with. Well, I'm just trying to - could you just bring us up to date here? Like, how did we get to this point?
RUEDA: Yeah, absolutely. So after the election took place on July 28, the Venezuelan Electoral Council, which runs the elections and is controlled by the ruling Socialist Party, declared Maduro the winner. But opposition activists in Venezuela collected thousands of tally sheets printed out by voting machines. They scanned them. They posted them online. And those records show pretty convincingly that Gonzalez won the election by a large margin. Possibly two-thirds of the vote went to Gonzalez. So that's basically what's bothering the Venezuelan government and making it lash out against Gonzalez and other opposition leaders.
And I think with this plane being confiscated, the Biden administration is trying to sort of show its teeth and signal to the Maduro government that they're serious about enforcing sanctions against the Venezuelan government, which could be sanctions over more serious issues eventually, such as oil projects in Venezuela, Venezuelan oil exports.
MARTIN: I see. OK, so now I understand that there's a warrant for Edmundo Gonzalez's arrest. Do we have any sense of - the opposition candidate, as we said. Do we know where he is, or what his next plan is?
RUEDA: Gonzalez hasn't been seen in public for more than a month, and that's probably because he was protecting himself from this type of situation, from getting arrested. You know, he might escape Venezuela, as has been the case with some other opposition leaders in the past, and try to continue to make his claims from abroad. However, the most popular opposition leader in Venezuela is Maria Corina Machado, the politician who basically ran Gonzalez's campaign after she was banned herself from participating in the election. And she's still in Venezuela and is promising to stage more protests and keep up the pressure against Maduro.
MARTIN: As we've been talking about all this, do we have any sense of how the general public is reacting to all this?
RUEDA: Well, you know, more than 1,600 people have been arrested in Venezuela in protests following the election. So people are very worried about what's happening. Media outlets have been censored. Even the social media platform X has been banned. So it's a difficult moment in Venezuela, and many people are also thinking about leaving the country because of this.
MARTIN: All right. That is freelance reporter Manuel Rueda. Manuel, thank you so much.
RUEDA: Absolutely. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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